1. Field of the Invention
The present inventions relates to agricultural implements for harvesting cotton in general and more particularly to a pneumatic machine for harvesting cotton.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Efforts have been made for many years to build cotton harvesting machines which can harvest cotton fiber (cotton balls) from cotton plants as efficiently and cleanly as manual labor but at a higher speed and lower cost. It is known in the prior art to utilize vacuum air suction for harvesting cotton balls. However, the known cotton picking machine using vacuum air suction, are not selective and as such they collect anything from the cotton plants that is sufficiently loose, such as sticks, leaves, dirt particles, etc. As a result, the cotton harvested by the conventional cotton picking machine using vacuum air suction, is dirty (dirt is mixed with the cotton fiber) and of lower quality than cotton picked by hand. The dirt is not removed during the ginning process and is baled and sold to customers in as is condition. Moreover, the conventional cotton picking machines drop approximately 10 to 20% of the cotton fiber to the ground during the picking process.
Therefore, the cotton picking machines are susceptible to improvements that may enhance their performance and cost. With this in mind, a need exists to develop an improved cotton picking (harvesting) machine with improved performance, inexpensive, and providing for more cost effective, efficient and low cost maintenance.